It’s not quite a cosmic confluence but two concerns are driving the NFL right now: the hunt for a new commissioner to replace outgoing Paul Tagliabue and the search for a new digital deal with May’s expiration of the current five-year, $120 million deal with CBS SportsLine and AOL. NFL owners expect a lot from the next online deal, which is the league’s last looming major media opportunity; in fact, new media rights are expected to account for a large chunk of the new revenue-sharing pool. The TV deals are in place. Sprint’s five-year $600 million wireless exclusive is just entering its second season. With that mind, a wide variety of options are being explored — and numerous companies are vying for the prize including the current partners, TV partners (ESPN, Fox, NBC and CBS), the other portals (Microsoft, Yahoo), Google, Sony, Apple. For all we know, Amazon is in the mix. (The final run for NFL.com could make the Microsoft-Google race for AOL look like moderate exertion.) News Corp. has a big stake in the NFL; in addition to Fox, DirecTV ihas the multichannel exclusive. The last deal has been called historic; the previous deal with ESPN was valued at $10 million over three years.
Not to be ignored: the NFL’s penchant for DIY. It has its own TV network. Why not run its own interent operations? The same man responsble for the network — Steve Bornstein — has considerable online experience.
USAT: Brian Rolapp, NFL VP for media strategy, says delivering when and where fans want is “a powerful driving force.” Rolapp told the paper he believes the media landscape could change more in the next 10 years than it did in the last 30-40.
– The pressure for more new media dollars is especially intense as a result of the collective-bargaining agreement.
Chicago Tribune: NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy says the new deal is a “clean slate” … It’s wide open. We haven’t made any decisions yet.” As fir the current partners, “A SportsLine spokesman would say only that the NFL negotiations are at a tender stage. An AOL spokesman would not comment on the talks, or even say if the company was bidding on the new contract.”
One industry exec I spoke with recently raised the idea that the NFL would extend the agreement with its current online partners for a year. That would seem more likely if the eventual plan is to go in-house. Any decision probably will include game downloads starting with 2006-2007.
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